A set from English Teacher at the 2025 Bilbao BBK Festival in Spain and broadcast on July 31, 2025 by Radio Nacional de España.
English Teacher are a relatively new entry in the Indie sweepstakes. Together since 2020 but having their first taste of success in 2024 when their debut album This Could Be Texas came out, grabbing a lot of enthusiastic press and a Mercury Prize along the way. Judges said their album stood out “for its originality and character” and displayed a “fresh approach to the traditional guitar band format”. English Teacher’s Mercury Prize win ended a nine-year streak of London-based talent winning the award, sparking conversation about the disparity in opportunities for musicians across the United Kingdom. They’ve been on a roll ever since and getting ready to start a tour later on this March, which should bring them to a number of Summer Festivals.
Although the band together come up with a sound that, as the Mercury Prize judges pointed out, is original, the standout is Lily Fontaine, who is frontwoman and primary lyricist of English Teacher and one of its primary songwriters. Caradoc Gayer of LeftLion praised Fontaine’s lyricism, which “read like poems filled with motion – dynamic, topical, and grounded in the cultural memory of Yorkshire. It’s top-grade song writing”, while Tom Pinnock of Uncut called her lyrics “deep and funny”. When the Horn Blows described Fontaine’s writing as “wry observations on modern life”, with the band’s lyrics touching on topics such as racism, identity, class and mental health.
All of those elements add up to a band clearly making friends and influencing people. More than just a group to keep an eye on, English Teacher is a band to marvel at over their sheer excellence and originality. I suspect they have a long and fruitful career ahead of them.
In the meantime, here is what they were up to last year at Bilbao.
Press Play and relax – it’s the weekend after all.